Said Maddow: “That means prosecutors would never have gotten it. So that means the only people that would’ve had access to this thing at Michael Cohen’s lawyers and President Trump’s lawyers. And Michael Cohen’s lawyers apparently didn’t leak this thing to the New York Times today. Which means, by process of elimination, that President Trump’s lawyers did.”

“Don’t get your chain yanked on this one,” added Maddow. “What appears to have happened here is that President Trump’s lawyers found out this tape existed. For obvious reasons they apparently realized it might be a potentially pretty ugly thing for the president to have exposed or have brought up in court as a surprise. And so today the president’s lawyers themselves appear to have leaked the existence of this tape to get ahead of the story.”